The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

On a rainy morning, a paper boy stops at Leo’s café for coffee. When the boy walks in, a man drinking beer calls him over and tells the boy he loves him. The boy is confused. The man shows the boy two pictures of a woman and asks if the boy knows her. The boy does not. The man takes a sip of his beer and says that he means to teach the boy about love, which he views as a science.

The woman in the photos was the man’s wife. They married 12 years ago and were together for one year, nine months, three days, and two nights, until she left him for another. The man loved her for helping him process his sometimes overwhelming emotions and for making him more complete. The man tried to find his wife for two years, but with no success. During the third year, he tried to remember her, but couldn’t. Eventually, however, memories of her began haunting him, elicited by everyday sights and sounds. He could not escape them, growing emotional at random times.

In the fifth year after his wife left, the man finally found peace and began thinking of love as a science.